


you look so good in love (you want him, that's easy to see)

by professortennant



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Break Up, F/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-27 21:50:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19798468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/professortennant/pseuds/professortennant
Summary: For the first time in the four years since Samantha Carter broke his heart, Pete Shanahan is returning to Colorado Springs to help the local police department out with a case. He runs into Sam, but she's not alone. There's a silver-haired Air Force General on her arm.





	you look so good in love (you want him, that's easy to see)

**Author's Note:**

> lowkey inspired by george strait's "you look so good in love" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlskmy33ou0) and also because i have a weakness for outsider POV's lookin in on my ship

It’s been four years since Pete Shanahan was last in Colorado Springs. Some things are still the same, he thinks. The trees are still lush and green and line the streets. The park in the center of town is still overflowing with activity—kids and barking dogs and hot dog stands.

And then, with a sharp pang in the vicinity of his heart, he realizes so much of Colorado Springs still reminds him of _her._ The hot dog stand where they’d grabbed a couple of dogs before he’d offered her a shiny ring, his heart, and an eternity together is still on the corner of the park entrance. 

He drives by the coffee shop in town that they used to spend leisurely Saturday mornings in, sipping piping hot coffee and sharing a pastry, flirting like they were a pair of teenagers in high school. 

But Pete ignores all of these places and pains. He puts on his sunglasses and clears his throat, tightens his hand on the steering wheel, and keeps driving to the Colorado Springs police station where his job waited for him. _Temporary_ job, he reminded himself, 

In the end, the case that the CSPD needed help with was pretty straightforward. A few nights of stakeouts, a couple of lucky breaks, and just like that, the job was done and in the morning he’d once again leave this city and head back for Denver. Pete just wanted to escape to his hotel room and hide from the memories of the blonde, blue-eyed United States Air Force Major who still held part of his heart, even after all this time. 

You didn’t just _get over_ someone like Samantha Carter and he certainly hadn’t. 

But his hopes for a quick and painless evening were dashed when the local lead detective—Gary something or other, he couldn’t quite remember—had slung an arm over his shoulder and ruffled his hair and insisted on the boys taking Pete out for one last ‘thank you’ beer. 

He tried to protest, to make his excuses, and smile his most charming smile. But Gary and the boys had ignored all the signals he was dropping and thrust his jacket into his arms and pushed him right out the door and into the waiting standard issue sedan. 

The drive to the bar, _O’Malley’s,_ was mercifully quick and he hoped he could get in and out of this situation relatively quickly, the lure of a night alone in the hotel as appealing as ever. But something wild and fluttering was taking root in his stomach at the rush of possibility of seeing _her_ at the bar. But then, he told himself, it was six o’clock on a Wednesday and the Samantha Carter he knew would still be at work, all concentration and focus there. 

Old tendrils of bitterness wound their way around his veins as he remembered that he was never enough—never interesting enough, never important enough, never _enough—_ to pull her away, to keep her attention.

Before he could sink too far into the past, the boys were pouring out of the car and pulling him out of the car and hustling him into the dark and cool bar. Pete wasn’t familiar with this particular establishment, but he immediately liked it. It felt old and friendly and once he had a whiskey drink in his hand and his back pressed against the squishy booth, he found himself relaxing and enjoying the company of his fellow cops. 

And then he heard her. 

Her laugh rang across the noisy establishment and settled against his skin and he felt his stomach drop to his toes and his heart accelerate rapidly—in anticipation, in anxiety, he didn’t know. It took him all of four seconds to scan the bar and find her.

The muted yellow-gold of the light hanging over the pool table caught each highlight of blonde in her hair, giving her a halo effect. _Fitting._

To his simultaneously delight and dismay, she looked good. Healthy. _Happy._ Around her, he could see her teammates, Daniel and Murray, both looking at her with faux-outrage. Daniel was rolling his own cue stick between his palms and Pete could just make out what he was saying. 

“Sam, c’mon, at least _pretend_ to be bad at this for the first few rounds. You’re killing Teal—I mean, Murray’s confidence.” 

“My confidence remains unshaken, Daniel Jackson. Colonel Carter’s prowess at this game is most impressive and I wish to learn from her.”

Pete watched as Daniel huffed, pushing the cue stick into Murray’s chest, and stalking off towards the mahogany bar, clearly intent on ordering another round. Perhaps in an attempt to blur Sam’s focus with alcohol. 

He watched with a sick sense of almost voyeurism, drinking her in, as she and Murray talked and joked together. The larger man’s deep voice didn’t quite carry, but he could see that Sam smiled at whatever it was he said. 

The sharp pain in his chest flared as he remembered a time when Sam used to smile at him like that, used to touch his arm softly. Pete’s not sure what it is that he expected, exactly. That on the day he ever ran into her again, that he would want to find her miserable and pining? That she would see him and tell him she’d made a huge mistake, that the grief of her father’s passing clouded her judgment? 

But the time for that had long since passed and the realization in combination with the second whiskey flowing through his system gave him the courage to clear his throat and murmur his excuses to Gary and his crew, and slip from the booth and make his way towards his former fiancée. 

He could do this. He could say hi, kiss her cheek, tell her no hard feelings, that he hopes she’s doing well, and maybe, just maybe, he could slip her his new number and make sure she knew that she could call him any time she found herself in Denver. 

Pete was about twenty feet from where Sam, Murray, and a freshly-returned Daniel (who was balancing a tray of dark brown ale bottles and a collection of smaller shot glasses filled with some electric blue concoction), when he saw _him._

“Danny boy, how many times do I gotta tell ya? You _can’t_ get Carter drunk. Believe me. I’ve _tried._ ”

Pete should have known that he—the Colonel, Jack O’Neill—would have been here, too. Wherever Sam was, inevitably O’Neill was nearby, hovering at her side. Old anger and resentment flared low in his stomach and he found his fist clenching tightly at his side. 

And then, all at once, the fight went out of him at the sight before him: Samantha Carter—formerly _his_ Samantha Carter—turning on the spot towards O’Neill, eyes lighting up and her smile widening, tilting her head up and accepting a soft kiss from the older man. 

He could see the way her fingers curled against O’Neill’s waist, fingertips digging into his side and keeping him pressed against her mouth for a half-second longer. It was an easy kiss, the kind of kiss born out of every day affection. 

Sam broke the kiss first, pushing the cue into O’Neill’s hands, before turning back towards Daniel and grabbing a shot and a bottle of ale off the tray. 

“Cheers.”

And then Pete was treated to O’Neill and Murray laughing at Daniel’s slack-jawed expression as Sam quickly downed the shot and chased it with a hefty gulp of dark beer. Sam sauntered back to O’Neill who happily passed her back the pool cue and slipped an arm over her shoulder. Easy. Comfortable. The kind of gesture that a lesser man would use for possession, a sign for other men to back the hell off. The kind of gesture that Pete himself had attempted on more than one occasion with Sam, only to have her politely shrug his arm off with a tight-lipped smile.

But now, apparently, from this man, she was happy to press back against his side and allow him to hold her a little closer. 

It stung more than he thought it should have after almost four years. 

In sick fascination, Pete hung back, couldn’t force his feet forward to interrupt the makeshift family gathered around the pool table. He just watched. Watched as Murray, Daniel, and Jack talked happily and freely, laughter flowing between them all. Watched as Sam walked around the pool table and racked up the balls and reset the table, turning to her companions with a cocked hip and a raised eyebrow. 

“Who’s up?”

Pete watched as Daniel and Murray shook their heads and O’Neill grinned—lazy and confident—and took the cue. 

“I think I’m up for the challenge, Carter.”

“What are the stakes?”

“Depends,” O’Neill countered. “We keepin’ it PG in front of the kids or—“

“Oh gross, Jack!” Daniel interjected with a mock-shudder.

And there it was again: Samantha Carter’s laugh. 

Pete allowed the torture to continue for another few minutes, continued watching as O’Neill and Sam walked—almost danced—around the pool table, brushing up against each other more than was strictly necessary in a pool game, exchanging smiles that on the surface seemed friendly enough but with a heat to them that Pete could see even from his position. 

But he wasn’t a masochist, not really, and when he caught O’Neill lean forward to whisper something in Sam’s ear that made her shudder and close her eyes and absolutely miss the cue ball by a mile, he decided that enough was enough. 

Walking back to Gary and the rest of the Colorado Springs PD crew, he made his apologies and excuses, threw down a twenty, and quietly slipped out of the front door of O’Malley’s, hailing a cab and heading back for his quiet hotel room. 

In the cab, he had time to think about the ache in his chest. It wasn’t that he begrudged her happiness—no. For all the heartache that she had ultimately caused him, he could never wish her true malice or unhappiness. 

Perhaps what had stung was that she was happy with O’Neill, a man who he had always been jealous of, suspicious of, and whom she had always vehemently denied having any sort of affair with. Maybe it was the slight that, from the outside, he just couldn’t see the appeal the man had over him. He was older and damaged and anyone with eyes could see he had enough baggage to start his own airline. 

But, when he thought back on the night, he realized the ache came from the look on Sam’s face. The way she had turned and looked at O’Neill like he was the light in the dark she had been waiting for, like he was the long, cool drink of water in a desert, like—

Fuck, he was too drunk for analogies. 

The point was, he thought, that for as long as Sam had been wearing his engagement ring and planning a _life_ with him, she had never once looked at him like that. Like she loved him, was _in love_ with him. 

What stung, what ached, what _hurt_ was that for the first time since he had known her, Pete had seen what Samantha Carter looked like when she was well and truly, incandescently, happy. 

And it wasn’t with him; would never have been with him. 

Pete paid the cab driver, hurried to his room, and promptly cleaned out the minibar and fell into bed, desperate to force his brain to stop replaying the evening, to stop the ringing of Sam’s laughter in his ear, to stop watching and re-watching the way Sam had so easily pressed herself against another man, allowed herself to be possessed by him.

In the morning, he drove back to Denver with a promise to never come back to Colorado Springs.

Sam had finally found happiness in a way that he now realized—well and truly accepted, even after four years—he would never be able to provide her. He would never have received the type of smile that Sam so easily gifted O’Neill last night. 

There was nothing left for him here, just ghosts and a life with a woman that was never really his. 


End file.
